


Shelter from the Storm

by soundingsea



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-21
Updated: 2009-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 14:28:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soundingsea/pseuds/soundingsea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean keeps fiddling with the radio, like there's going to be a magical station playing only Zeppelin and Bad Company.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shelter from the Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [csichick_2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/csichick_2/gifts).



Friday lunch rush at Norske Nook usually goes past two, but today it's dead. Lefse's going uneaten and meringue is drooping in the pie case, which is bad for business. Not that it's Jo's bottom line, but Osseo makes a decent base of operations, and there's not much else in this three-block town.

Jo flicks the ash off her cigarette and looks at the sky. Maybe it's the ominous green clouds that came up with the sun this morning or the stifling air that promises tornadoes, but she's not thrilled with today's weather, and the wind just seems to be getting worse. It's blowing in from the east, which is positively unnatural. It's like Lake Michigan is spreading tendrils of mist their way, except that the lake is on the other side of the state.

She takes one last long drag and stubs out her cigarette. _A filthy habit_, she can hear her mom saying in her head. But everybody smokes, and it's a good way to bond with folks passing through, hear about strange things they've seen. Her mom wouldn't much like that either, but hunting's in Jo's blood.

When she gets back in the kitchen, Derek is trying to fix the deep-fryer and Mary Beth is losing it over all this morning's prep that went for nothing. Jo smoothes her embroidered apron and heads back out to front of the house.

"Turns out, hell on earth is a lot like Wisconsin."

Jo doesn't have to turn around to know that voice. What on God's green earth are the Winchesters doing at booth 4?

"How so?" asks Sam, clearly humoring his brother.

Dean says, "The weather is for shit, and it's kinda deserted."

Jo's surprised by how defensive she feels, hearing that. It's not like this is home the way South Dakota was, but still. She brings some menus over out of habit. "Get you started with some coffee?" she manages without biting Dean's head off.

"Holy... Since when are you some kind of Viking wench?" Dean asks. He looks a little too long at the neckline of the ruffled blouse she has to wear, until Sam kicks him under the table.

"What my brother means is hello, Jo. Nice to see you again, and we'd love coffee."

"And pie," Dean adds, grinning.

She indicates the pie on the menu, then heads to grab a coffeepot. Regular; she doesn't have to ask that question. No way do these boys drink unleaded. They keep talking; she wonders if they realize that with the place this empty she can hear everything.

Sam is not a happy camper. "The world's ending, and we go out of our way. For pie!"

"We gotta eat, Sammy. Might as well be pie. And we're making decent time. It's only an extra hour and a half."

Jo pours their coffee, then looks expectantly at them. "Well?"

Dean grins wolfishly. "Cherry pie."

Jo rolls her eyes and looks to Sam. He hesitates for a minute; unlike Dean, he's actually reading the menu. "Um, sour cream apple lingonberry."

When she comes back with the pie, Jo sidles into the booth next to Sam.

"So, what sort of end of the world brings you to western Wisconsin? And is that awful orange Mustang really what you're driving these days?" She nods to the only car parked on the street out front.

"The Impala's back at Bobby's," Dean explains. "Our angel pals beamed me up. That blue-light special is all Sam's."

Suddenly the car is way less interesting. Jo glances about and sees no customers other than these jokers, then squeaks with barely stifled amazement, "Angels?"

*

Three pieces of pie later, Dean's spun a heckuva yarn. Jo isn't sure how much of this she'd buy, except that she's been seeing things get worse and worse in the demonic possession and wholesale slaughter business. And then there's Sam. He seems edgy and worried. Keeps looking around like the devil might be hiding behind the ketchup.

"So let me get this straight," Jo says slowly. "You thought that Sam here was a horcrux, but it turned out this Lilith demon was the final seal or whatever."

"Bingo," Dean says, licking his fork.

"Since when do you read _Harry Potter_?" Sam interjects.

"Hey, it's literature. I read." At Sam's incredulous expression, Dean continues, "Sometimes. More than the articles in _Playboy_, anyhow."

Sam sets his napkin on the table and gulps down the dregs of his coffee. "Yeah, well, let's get the hell out of Wisconsin before Odin and Loki show up, okay?"

Just then, glass shatters in a deafening crash. The front window of the restaurant ends up in pieces on the floor, in Jo's hair, in Dean's coffee, and a big chunk embedded in Sam's arm. There's a chair in the pie case. The register's got coffee dripping into it.

"What the fuck?" Dean manages. He and Sam are crouched in a defensive posture, but there's nothing attacking: just the howling wind.

Jo gets up cautiously when things quiet down. Looking out through the nice new hole in the front of the restaurant, she winces.

"Windows are shot on your getaway car, guys."

"Thank you for stating the obvious, oh wise one." Dean's picking glass out of Sam's arm, which maybe would give Sam license to be a smartass, but of course Dean's the one snarking at her for no good reason.

"I'm just saying... my Buick's out back. Might not have been hit as bad."

Jo scrambles up from behind the chair and off before they can say boo. But when she reaches the door of the kitchen, she stops. "Fuck."

The Winchesters are at her side when she steps in, past a glassy-eyed Derek and a slumped-over Mary Beth.

"Since when is wind fatal?" Dean wonders.

"Since it blows branches through windows and impales people," replies Sam, surveying the kitchen.

"And since it knocks them head over heels into the stove," Jo adds.

"Okay, we need to high-tail it back to Bobby's and figure out what we can do about this," Dean says. "It's probably Lucifer, but last time I checked the prince of darkness wasn't all about evil wind."

Tornado sirens sound in the distance, but there's an ebb and fall that says maybe a squad car's been mobilized too. Jo reluctantly leaves the bodies of her co-workers as they are. "The security alarm on the plate-glass front window costs plenty per month. The cops can deal with this."

Sam runs a hand through his hair, worry evident. "Um, if we're not taking it, we should probably torch the Mustang."

"Why?" Dean wonders. Jo wouldn't have asked. She's seen Sam look like this before: intense and a little scary.

"Do we have to do this?" Sam flexes his arm, and it's bleeding again.

"Do what? Sammy, is there something I should know? Bodies in the trunk?"

Jo leave them arguing and heads for her convertible. The rag-top and windows are all down, so there's no worse damage than a few broken lights and a new crack in the windshield. She gets her gas can and storms back into what's left of Norske Nook.

"If you want to set anything on fire before the cops get here, you boys have about ten seconds. Then I'm pulling the car around and we're getting the hell out of dodge."

Sure enough, by the time she rounds the corner in her boat-like Buick, the Mustang's burning. Dean vaults into the passenger seat without opening the door, while Sam, gas can in his good hand, gingerly lets himself into the back. She peels out and hangs a left on Harmony.

"Wait a minute. 94's back that way!" Dean says, craning his neck.

"Relax; I know where I'm going. 53 south has way less back-tracking. Next stop, Sioux Falls."

*

"And then we hit the toll roads around Chi-town, and Sam's looking at me like I'm a mall fountain."

Possibly the only thing more tedious than a road trip without adequate music is hearing a blow-by-blow of somebody else's road trip without adequate music. There are plenty of perfectly reasonable country stations in southern Minnesota, but Dean keeps fiddling with the radio, like there's going to be a magical station playing only Zeppelin and Bad Company. Sam's dozing off in the back seat, but Jo figures he probably wouldn't agree with either of them anyhow.

They try to compromise on public radio, but the news is all about the weather on the eastern seaboard spreading westward, and the announcers know less than they do about what's going on. Apparently Manhattan's underwater and the government has declared Disneyworld a disaster zone. Super.

Jo grits her teeth and keeps driving. At least there's that one small victory; Dean's not sweet-talking his way out of the passenger seat.

*

Miles roll by, punctuated by silences. Jo's getting permanent squint lines from driving into the sun. Or possibly from listening to Dean; jury's still out on that one.

"If the world was gonna end in a thunderclap, would have happened back in Maryland. Instead, I blink and there's a white flash imprinted photo-negative on the inside of my eyelids."

Great; more dwelling on their little end-of-the-world problem. Jo wishes she drank more coffee back at the Nook. They keep talking in circles when really, without the research they can do at Bobby's, there's no point. And they keep getting his voicemail when they call.

"And now Lucifer's walking the earth." She says this absently, her attention on the crack in the windshield. It seems to have grown, but at least the unnatural wind hasn't hit them on the road.

Probably time to put the top and sides up, since it'll be colder after dark. And they need gas.

*

Gas station off I-90 must have been hit by something like what happened in Osseo. Windows smashed out, pumps uprooted, no people anywhere. Live ones, anyhow. A few of the bigger trucks could have somebody in their overturned cabs, but the place is silent like the grave. The scorched outline of wings on the pavement bears mute testimony to the warring forces.

"We've got front-row tickets to an angel-demon smackdown, and it looks a lot like a monster truck rally." Dean's wistful, like he'd enjoy such an event were it not quite this prone to loss of life. "They sure as hell wanted Sam to bring on Armageddon."

Sam surveys the damage. "I'll get supplies," he says curtly, getting out of the car and loping towards the stop-and-rob.

"Weapons in the trunk," Jo offers. Sam flashes a wicked-looking knife before heading inside. Dean, though, helps himself to her favorite .45 cal before nodding appreciatively at her neatly coiled ropes, bags of salt, and the like.

"Well, hell," Dean says, looking at the tangled mess of gas pumps. "Okay, plan B. Grab the gas can."

Dean ducks into what must have been an attached service station, then emerges with a length of plastic tubing.

"Siphoning, huh? Good plan, if somewhat slow. More than a few cars; I'll see if I can find another gas can."

Dean grimaces. "You do that. I'll be enjoying some delicious gasoline."

She steps into the wreckage of the store, where Sam's efficiently packing bottled water and non-perishable food into a Goodyear Tire bag.

"I have more bandages, but I'm running low on disinfectant," she says. "And I don't like the look of that arm."

"You look pretty lacerated yourself," Sam points out.

The bathroom doesn't need a key; small mercy, because she doesn't want to go near the arm flung out from behind the counter. Splashing water on her face, Jo wonders when exactly the dark circles under her eyes got this bad. And Sam's right; her face and neck now feature a webbing of scratches and scrapes probably full of microscopic glass shards. Ugh. She dries her hands and heads back out into the convenience store.

Aggravatingly, the locked case holding the smokes is intact. One swing of a tire iron from the vantage point of standing on the counter, though, and she's got a pack. No, two. Who knows what else they're going to encounter? Best not to have to stop too often.

And she's so not looking down, because she doesn't want to be up close and personal with any more corpses than strictly necessary. Smokes in hand, she grabs a gas can and follows Sam out. This would probably be a good time to think about quitting, but somehow she's not seeing this situation getting any less stressful.

*

As they near the South Dakota border, the road ahead is dusty, windswept. But behind them, thunder rumbles and clouds roil along the eastern horizon. No other cars on the road; everyone else has too much sense to be out in this. _Or they're dead_, Jo thinks. None of them want to say that.

"Since when do storms travel east-to-west?" Jo asks, because it's been bugging her all day.

"Lucifer is the light-bearer," Sam says slowly, like he's working something out. "Nobody's field-tested this theory, but it makes sense that he can influence the fundamental elements, bring darkness out of light."

"What, he's got clouds on speed-dial?" Dean says. "Apocalyptic storms?"

"Catastrophic climate change is supposed to be a slow process," Sam says. "But with demonic intervention..."

"What happens if it accelerates?" Jo wonders.

"Nothing good." Dean shakes his head. "Might explain Manhattan. Sammy, you slept through the president telling people to get the hell away from the coasts. You know it's a bad scene when even _he_ can't make it sound okay."

Last Jo heard, her mom was out in California somewhere. She bites her lower lip and tries to tune the Winchesters out.

The rain hits in a shattering sheet, seeping in around the edges of the wind-battered soft top. The windshield's holding, but when the hail starts, Jo can only drive faster and hope.

*

They pull up to Singer Salvage at what would be close to dusk, were the sky not a sickly dark green beyond the deluge of rain. There's a flickering lantern in the front window, though it's nowhere near dark, and a generator's tell-tale hum comes from behind the house. The front door stands ajar.

"Something's not right." Dean flings the door open and jumps out of the car while it's still moving. Jo pulls up a second later and parks next to Dean's Impala.

Without a word, Sam follows him, and Jo grabs her backup gun from under the seat before rushing up the front steps after them. She's drenched before getting inside.

The entryway is painted with blood. Pieces of furniture are strewn across their path. Sam heads upstairs, and Dean to the back of the house. Jo checks out the basement. No sign of Bobby, though it looks like he's done some demon-unfriendly decorating. There's a room with enough supplies and sigils to wait out anything.

She's still poking around in the corners of the basement when Sam and Dean join her.

"Nobody in the house," Dean says. "Let's sweep the salvage yard."

Sam hesitates, then steps over the threshold of the room with the secure door. He returns with flashlights.

Dean looks at him quizzically. "How did you mojo your way out of Bobby's panic room, anyhow?"

Sam sighs. "I didn't. The door swung open."

"Somebody opened it. Sure as hell wasn't me or Bobby."

"Guys? Look for Bobby now; argue later." Jo takes a flashlight and heads upstairs.

*

Despite the pouring rain, they comb the grounds for a couple hours, to no avail. They turn the house upside-down and finally come to the conclusion that Bobby's not here, alive or dead. His cell phone is sitting in the kitchen and his truck's parked outside, so it's a safe bet he didn't take off under his own steam.

Sam putters around in the kitchen whipping up dinner while Jo helps Dean drag Bobby's mattress down to the panic room; no way would the three of them be able to fit on the narrow bed already down there.

"When did he set this place up?" Jo asks. "And did I hear wrong, or was Sam locked in here?"

Dean flops down on the mattress and flings an arm over his face. "It wasn't like that. He was in trouble, and we were just trying to help."

Jo sits on the edge of the twin bed that's probably going to be hers. The double mattress fills the rest of the floor, so she rests her feet on it. "Family is tough. I haven't talked to my mom for almost a year."

"Where's Ellen these days?" Dean asks without opening his eyes.

"California, I think. If things get worse, I--I'd really like to go find her."

"Try calling?"

"I've left her message after message."

From the look on Dean's face, Jo gets the feeling he's been there. But bringing up his dad leads to her dad leads to no place she wants to go. The past casts a shadow on the present. Okay, sometimes, that shadow's more of a comfy blanket, but either way they're under it.

Sam calls down the stairs, banishing her reverie. "Soup's on!"

Jo and Dean race upstairs, Jo winning on points only because she totally cheated by throwing a pillow at Dean's head to get out in front of him.

Dinner's not actually soup; it's mac 'n cheese from a box, the best kind.

With his mouth full of cheesy pasta, Dean asks, "Hey, Sam. You get that voicemail I left you, before I got to Maryland?"

It's like a chill falls on the room. "That message, Dean. Nothing could have been worse. Hearing that you thought of me as a monster..." Sam closes his eyes, brow furrowed.

Dean looks extremely confused, followed by extremely pissed. "Aw, shit. They _said_ my phone was out of range."

Jo is lost at this point. "Who said?"

"The angels. Sammy, the message I left you--that bullshit you heard's not what it said."

Sam stares at his mac 'n cheese like it's alien to him, then drops his spoon into his bowl. Dean goes from eating with gusto to stirring the orange goop. Jo feels a little guilty about the fact that she still has an appetite, but it doesn't stop her from having seconds.

After dinner, she steps onto the porch for a smoke; she needs to figure some things out, and the Winchesters might need some hug and share time.

*

The storm rages outside, wind howling and hail clattering. Rituals take them towards bedtime: Dean and then Sam showering off the blood, washing the dishes, turning the generator off, laying fresh salt lines. Those might be useless; something got in before. But they have to try.

Jo paces Bobby's living room and tries calling her mom a couple more times. When she comes back in the kitchen, Sam's got his shirt off and Dean's stitching up the gash from the broken glass. The intimacy makes her catch her breath and fills her with an odd longing for something she's never had.

After the Winchesters head downstairs, Jo showers. Bobby must have a good-sized water heater, because there's still hot water and plenty of it. She doesn't take too long, but washing her hair takes a few minutes. Cutting it would be more practical, but she has some small amount of vanity. She'll admit that to herself, just as she'll admit, in private, that sometimes she'll cry. For Uncle Bobby, for everybody she's seen dead today, for a world that's headed to hell.

Clean and face scrubbed to remove incriminating evidence, she rejects the ridiculous costume she put on for work two states ago in favor of stealing one of Bobby's long-tailed flannel shirts. She might be contemplating something highly inappropriate, but she's not going to do it in Viking bar wench garb.

Jo doesn't fool herself into thinking she's going to mend the rift between Sam and Dean. There's hurt there too deep for words. Good thing words aren't part of the plan.

Barefoot, she pads downstairs to the cozy room complete with everything one might need to survive an evil nuclear war. The room's dimly lit, with shadows cast by Bobby's lantern. She pulls the door closed and latches it.

Sam and Dean are sitting on their mattress. Sam is curled into himself, with Dean's arm draped around his shoulders. Jo joins them, gently running her fingers along Sam's bandaged arm.

Dean rests a hand on her bare leg, and Sam touches her face, fingers brushing her cheek, then her lower lip. In their orbit, Jo feels inhibition tumbling away. Dean's quiet, for once, while Sam is the one saying things that loosen the knot inside her in a flush of warmth.

Hands grasping, lips pressing, every scrap of clothing removed. Skin glistens in the flickering light. Tastes of salt and heat, of family and need. Nothing can reach them here, and the world's opinion matters not at all.

Dean is careful with Jo, not that she needs it, but is more careful with Sam. And here Jo's surprised all over again. This clearly isn't the first time. Whether there's always a girl is definitely open for debate; the way they devour one another, they know each other like no one else ever can.

When Sam comes, she sees power in his eyes. When Dean comes, she looks into his eyes and sees Sam.

If the world ends by morning, at least they have tonight.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://csichick-2.livejournal.com/profile)[**csichick_2**](http://csichick-2.livejournal.com/) in the [](http://community.livejournal.com/apocalyptothon/profile)[**apocalyptothon**](http://community.livejournal.com/apocalyptothon/) 2009 ficathon. Request: "Lilith breaks the final seal; slash pairings preferred; please no Sam/Ruby." Het and Wincest: two great tastes that taste great together. Thanks to my betas: [](http://spiralleds.livejournal.com/profile)[**spiralleds**](http://spiralleds.livejournal.com/) for reading draft after draft and [](http://afrocurl.livejournal.com/profile)[**afrocurl**](http://afrocurl.livejournal.com/) for pointing out stuff I didn't think about.


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